“I’m far from uncritical about approaches in the education area but really, this is nonsense”.

Absolutely false. Just one example because as are pleny more, there was a detailed contribution from a parent on teacher profiteering for extra services last week and with a laughable reaction of hear no evil see no evil from yourself combined with snide remarks on the good faith of the contributer. This is a site designated only for spear carriers and propaganda merchants for teachers.

Wrong richotto. And by the way, could you have been ‘A Parent’? There was a certainly similarity of style and I find it interesting up you pop again at almost the same time.

But be that as it may, I actually engaged with the substance of what was being said and pointed out that those who make charges of ‘profiteering’ at second level (or in any context now I think about it) need to do the basics of investigation the facts and coming up with some substantial evidence before making allegations. They didn’t and I’m sorry, I think I have every right to point out that basic flaw.

I also noted that if they had proof of ‘profiteering’ or even the use of school facilities for non-curricula based profit making tuition (as well as coercion against students) I’d be 100% in their corner in decrying it.

Which, by the way has absolutely nothing to do with my approach to education whatsoever (unless one takes a troll-like view that any allegation is fair game and is to be treated with the utmost seriosness despite investigation or evidence).

But keep on keeping on, your little jibe at the end there is noted as is the continual bad faith with which you have interacted with this site.

Honestly, WorldByStorm, one rarely hears such misplaced self-righteousness come out of the mouth of any man who hasn’t taken holy orders.
So, to cap off your fine performance last week in projecting your own dishonesty onto me (oh, but I really really assumed after-school activities are generally held in the evening time, I’m like totally clueless as to how schools actually run despite having a child in one …), you then go on to accuse me of sock-puppetry?
You really should stick your head out of your little echo-chamber full of yay-saying sycophants once in a while, it might soften your cloying self-regard just a teeny tiny bit.

You don’t offer the full details of what you know, and only drip that information out, you don’t understand the concept of interpreting the same account in two different ways in a purely hypothetical sense in order to illustrate that these matters are open to a variety of interpretation, you can’t see that it was me who made the assumption- and I too have a child in school (by the way, where I went to school there was nothing unusual in after school events later in the afternoon/evening but horses for courses I guess), and I was merely pointing an interesting similarity between your posts and those of richotto.

Now despite the fact I've been enormously patient with your throwing unsubstantiated allegations around – when you yourself have admitted you didn't know the full facts – and treated them with more time than they consequently deserve – you insult me personally.

Right, and your snide suggestions about my veracity are just par-for-the-course, a bit of the old friendly rough-and-tumble, all meant to be taken in the spirit of good fun?
You seem to think you’ve a carte blanche to insult others to your heart’s content, but then expect all to treat you with kid gloves. Why exactly? Coz it’s your site? (“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to …”, very adult.)

FFS, is this the catch-all response to any dissenting opinion is to throw around accusations of sock-puppetry on the basis of no evidence?
Oh, sorry yeah, there’s that similiarity in style …
Jesus, ye really are a bunch of (what my teenage son would call) cowardly lame-ohs.
Well, enjoy the illusion of universal support for your opinions that comes from chasing off anyone who disagrees. The playground bully and his pathetic group of henchmen generally suffers from similar delusions …

I’d be a right tulip to take anything anyone said on the internet without at least some questioning as to source, content and motivation. So yeah, someone who has at every point upped the ante in terms of belligerence and ignored every single occasion I have expressed support in relation to aspects of an issue suggests enormous bad faith at the least and trolling almost as a matter of course. I’ve not used terms like ‘cloying self-regard’ etc in relation to you at any point. And that is a personalisation of what is meant to be a serious topic. Either you treat it as such or you don’t, but your instinct has clearly been to go down a certain road.

And it’s worth noting that those of us on the left in whatever form have a fairly grounded opinion as to how popular our beliefs are. But given that A Parent doesn’t actually read what we write and appears to be having an argument with some caricature of what is actually being said by me and others on this site it’s time to draw this to an end.

This is a site designated only for spear carriers and propaganda merchants for teachers.

And some actual teachers as well. Poisoned this place, rank with educators laughing all the way to the bank.

Alternatively, because a fair few of us actually, you know, teach, and others are close to those who do, and more are parents with school age kids, we may actually have something intelligent, informed and balanced to say on the subject.

Once more – the arguably most effective secondary system in the world is that of the Finns, and a cornerstone of their approach is that teachers should be part of a well-respected profession with reasonably good working conditions and pedagogic autonomy.

The like of O’Kelly would have them replaced with (vastly expensive and non-functional) computer systems.

Clarification – I’m not a teacher, but can still remember what it’s like to have a good or even great teacher.

[…] that right is not actually upheld in this state in full. In the meantime, and following on from Emer O’Kelly’s thoughts on education in the Sunday Independent at the weekend, the editorial is well worth a read, though not perhaps […]